Tax breaks for Big Tech come at a steep cost to Georgia working families
Georgia has always been a bellwether for America’s political and economic direction. We are often the first to see where policy experiments lead ― whether in voting rights, healthcare access or environmental justice.
Today, Georgia is again leading the way, but in a troubling direction. Our Legislature is handing out billions of dollars in tax breaks to data centers, which will leave working families, especially Black and brown communities, footing the bill. The push for data centers increases across the country as artificial intelligence continues its unrelenting march forward, and what’s happening here foretells a dangerous precedent for the rest of the nation.
Data centers are a democracy issue. Who pays, who gets a break and who decides are all questions that end up on a ballot.
The state has given sweeping sales and property tax exemptions to lure data center development, a move that will cost the state a staggering $2.5 billion just this fiscal year.
This money could have gone to expanding Medicaid, modernizing transit or building affordable housing. Instead, it is padding corporate bottom lines ― while multiple bills were presented in the recent legislative session to curb these breaks, big business won out over taxpayers and none passed. Georgia’s film tax breaks are a cautionary example. Despite years of subsidies meant to spur economic growth, audits and reporting have shown the state’s taxpayers bore the cost while the promised return never fully materialized.
Other states across the US are pushing back
These projects further cost consumers by fueling a surge in energy demand that is driving up utility rates for everyone else. Data centers consume astonishing amounts of electricity ― sometimes as much as a small city ― to keep servers running around the clock. As utilities scramble to meet that demand, residential customers end up paying higher rates.
This burden falls heaviest on those who can least afford it. Black and brown families in metro Atlanta and across rural Georgia already face some of the highest housing cost burdens in the country. Add climbing utility costs and the current prospect of a recession amid soaring gas prices, and the squeeze is relentless.
But in a blueprint for other states to follow, Georgia’s voters have started to fight back. Last November, we made history. After nearly two decades without a Democratic victory in statewide office, voters elected two Democrats to the Public Service Commission — the body that regulates utilities and helps decide how power costs are set. That vote was not just political symbolism; it was an outcry against unchecked corporate influence and escalating household costs.
And across the country, the politics around data centers are shifting fast.
- In Illinois, Gov. JB Pritzker has moved to pause tax incentives for new data centers while the state studies their impact on energy costs and the grid.
- In Virginia, lawmakers went into special session over the state’s $2 billion annual data center tax exemption, which was ultimately preserved.
- And in Maine, state lawmakers acted to exclude new data centers from certain tax exemption programs, even as the governor vetoed an 18-month moratorium on new data center construction but did sign a bill exempting them from tax breaks.
Nationally, the trend line is clear: more states are rethinking whether these large subsidies still make sense as concerns grow about energy use, water demand and the public cost of the incentives.
PSC results were a referendum on affordability
That tipping point is coming soon as data centers rapidly expand — and according to new research from Pew, rural communities will be hit hardest. Nationally, as tech giants scale up data operations to power AI tools, cloud infrastructure and social platforms, electricity usage will skyrocket. In many regions, that increased data center energy consumption — up 80% in the past half-decade — will strain grids already under pressure from climate extremes and aging infrastructure. The costs will inevitably fall on consumers, and the state revenues lost to tax giveaways will make it harder to invest in solutions.
If we want to tackle the affordability crisis weighing down families, we have to start by examining how state budgets work — whose interests they serve and who is left behind. Utility costs are rising across all sectors: electricity, water and natural gas. These are not abstract economic trends. They are daily realities forcing families to cut back, fall behind or go without.
Georgia’s voters have shown what change looks like. We made the PSC election a referendum on fairness and affordability, and we won.
The nation faces a crossroads similar to ours. Do we keep underwriting corporate growth models that deepen inequality and destabilize communities, or do we chart a more sustainable future that values care and accountability? It’s time for lawmakers everywhere to decide whom they serve — the billion-dollar data centers or the families whose labor and votes sustain democracy itself.
Tamieka Atkins is CEO of ProGeorgia, an affiliate of the State Voices Network and part of a coalition of more than 60 civic engagement and advocacy organizations.
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